On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:20:40 -0600, Newps wrote:

Ron Wanttaja wrote:

No, you just have to understand the realities of the process.

That's a bad analogy, we're not looking for one airplane in a sea of
other planes. Remove all the planes in the picture except one. Now try
and find the one plane.

As I originally posted,"After nearly two weeks of an intense air search, the
lack of success is probably because Fossett's Decathlon doesn't strongly
resemble an aircraft any more. It's undoubtedly crumpled, it's quite possibly
burned. By now, it's probably dusted with the "dirt and sand" you refer to,
making it blend in even better....The persons who would examine the imagery
wouldn't be looking for the big white "+" of wings and fuselage, they'd be
looking at every apparent bush, every apparent rock, to guess if sometime, in
the past, it just may have been an airplane."

Just because a section of the image DOESN'T contain a *recognizable* aircraft
doesn't mean the wreckage of Fossett's plane isn't there. You could certainly
shorten your search time if you only searched for intact airplanes that were not
covered with dust. But I don't believe the Decathlon is just sitting parked,
undamaged.

Here's a picture of a Twin Beech crashed in the desert:

http://www.aircraftwrecks.com/images...beachcraft.jpg

Noticed how the crumpled portion of the main section seems to blend into the
desert. The tail cone is fairly obvious (this close), but remember the
Decathlon was fabric covered...it may have burned away, and all they'll see is s
skein of blackened 3/4" steel tubes. It probably looks closer to this:

http://www.ctie.monash.edu.au/hargra...desert_500.jpg

It's been two weeks. Certainly one doesn't want to give up hope; after all, an
elderly woman lost for two weeks in the Pacific Northwest was recently found
alive. But then, she was in the woodlands, not a desert. How much water was
Fossett carrying?

Ron Wanttaja